Nate Silver moving blog from NYTimes to ESPN

The political blogger and the sports network announced today that Silver is moving his fivethirtyeight blog away from the New York Times, confirming published reports. The site, which will revert to its original name of fivethirtyeight.com, will include both sports and elections coverage. It will be edited independently, like ESPN’s Grantland sports and pop culture site.

Nate Silver–AP Photo

Silver won acclaim by using statistical models to predict both the worst-to-first rise of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 and the outcome of the 2008 presidential election in 49 of 50 states, missing only Indiana. He took his site to the Times in 2010. He confirmed his election success in 2012 with a perfect 50-state record.

The New Republic has a good article about the tensions between Silver and the Times, and whether the newspaper could have done anything to avoid the defection of a blogger who reportedly drove 20 percent of the Times’ web traffic during the campaign season last year. Given ESPN’s larger resources and footprint–Silver will appear on television on both ESPN and ABC as well as blogging–the answer is probably not. It’s one more sign of how media power is shifting.